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Hi there, and welcome to “Final Fantasy: Record Keeper”. Whether you’re an experienced Final Fantasy player, or a fresh face to this franchise, there’s a few tips and tricks you should probably know about before delving too deeply into the game.

If you happen to have some tips and tricks of your own, or some information you think it’s important to know early on, then please don’t hesitate to share it with me. I’ll be happy to add it to the guide if it’s useful information!

General Tips

Tyro, which is the default name (And the one other players refer to him as) of the main character you get to name yourself. He is a “Jack of All Trades” character, meaning he has average stats but he can use every single weapon, armour and ability in the game. He’s a very useful character to have levelled, even if you don’t use him all the time.

Tempting as it may be, do not waste Mythril on Stamina Refills, or Dungeon Revives. It’s never worth it.

“Stamina Shards” are the 5 dots beneath your Stamina Bar in the upper right corner, and fill orange to signify when you have one. When you reach 5 Stamina Shards, you gain +1 to your maximum stamina, and your stamina bar is fully replenished. If you check the Rewards before a dungeon, and see that it will give you enough Shards to “Level up”, then you can check how much stamina you need to beat that Dungeon on this site and then spend any stamina that would be “Wasted” before going in.

“Realm Synergy”, or “Record Synergy” or “Nostalgia Bonus” is a system put in place to boost items and character when used in the realm they originated. This is a very important system, and will be explained in more detail later.

The “Core” characters, those being ones that are the names of jobs rather than characters (I.e ‘White Mage’, ‘Black Mage’, ‘Knight’ etc) are generally extremely bad characters and should be replaced with named characters as soon as convenient.

“Formation” refers to the Front and Back row of Combat. Characters in the Front row deal more damage, but also take more damage. Characters in the Back Row take less damage, but deal less damage. Some forms of attack aren’t affected negatively by being in the back row, this is all ranged Abilities (I.e “Jump”, “Shuriken”) and all Magic, as well as any ability used while using a ranged Weapon (I.e “Silver Harp”, “Bowgun”, “Chakram”). Make sure your characters are in the correct formation when you go into battle, you can change this via the “Party” screen, or via “Camp” if you’re in a dungeon.

Fusing and Combining Equipment is one of the better, and generally easier, ways to improve your characters.

Abilities and HP do not regenerate between battles in the same dungeon, however there is a small chance for enemies to drop HP or MP Potions, which restore HP and Ability Uses. Despite this, it’s not advised to use Abilities before the boss fight unless you have to, as you can’t rely on an MP Potion to drop.

“Soul Breaks” or “Limit Breaks” are the special abilities unique to each character, and most characters can gain an alternate one by getting special gear that is related to their character. The starting Soul Break of each character is generally fairly bad, and so for a lot of characters it’s better to just not use it, as their regular attack will be superior.

We get new Content (Usually a new event) every week, usually on the Wednesday but occasionally on other days.

When aiming for “Mastery” (That is, the Gold Trophy) of a Dungeon, it is not required to do the Special Condition of the Boss Battle, but it does make it easier. If you do very well in the stages leading up to the boss fight, you should still be able to attain Mastery if you do not do too badly in the Boss fight itself.

Sometimes before, or during, a boss fight there will be text along the top of the screen. Sometimes this is story related, bust a lot of the time it can actually be hints for the upcoming fight. Try to pay attention, they can save you a lot of pain!

“Difficulty Level” of a dungeon is not a recommended level, it’s just a number to show you how hard it is relative to other Dungeons (And is not always accurate, as elements and Record Synergy can make a huge difference in difficulty)

Previous Events will come around again, so don’t be too sad that you missed out on a favourite character. Just means you’ll be more than ready to get them next time.

If you’re farming a particular item drop from a Boss, “Standard” or “Elite” has no affect on the drop rate. Generally Orbs and Gil drops are improved in Elite dungeons, but Weapons/Armour remain the same.

The game was released first in Japan “JP”, so things on this site or that people talk about may be referencing future content, rather than current content, as we get things almost exactly the same as Japan did.

There is a “Chatango” app on the right of this website, feel free to come by and chat or ask any questions you have, we’re generally a really friendly bunch.

Daily Dungeons

Daily Dungeons are a set of dungeons that change depending on what day of the week it is. Each of the different dungeons specialise in a different form of loot, and will be where you “Farm” most of the Materia, Gil and EXP you need to improve your Party.

These Dungeons come in “Easy”, “Normal” and “Hard” variants each day, with the loot being significantly improved in each additional difficulty.

Wednesday is unique in that it has two Dungeons, one of which is the same as Saturdays.

It’s generally considered better to go into the first stage of the “Hard” Dungeon, and use all your abilities to beat it and then retreat, rather than farming “Normal” if you are capable. This obviously doesn’t apply if you can’t reliably beat the first stage of “Hard”, even with abilities.

Characters

You will be getting a lot of characters as you play through Record Keeper, though a lot of these will be time limited in Events. Unfortunately, a lot of characters you get simply won’t be worth using, as they have either a terrible Gear/Ability selection, terrible stats, or both.

Some characters you get from Classic Dungeons that are worth using:

Cloud

Rydia

Josef

Kain

Cloud is the only one that you’ll use for a very long time, the others are good but you will want to replace them with better characters from events when you are able.

As mentioned previously, the “Core” characters (With the exception of Tyro, the main character) are very bad and should be replaced as soon as convenient. A lot of people use Tyro as a White Mage, simply so they don’t have to use the “White Mage” character as one.

(This is accurate up until the second batch of Classic Dungeons, if a third is released there may be more good characters available to use)

Abilities

The first thing to know about Abilities, is that they are amazing and wonderful, and you’ll wish you could carry more than two per character.

Each Ability allows your character to perform a certain action, most often dealing damage, sometimes with additional effects or with added elemental damage. The majority of these attacks also have a “Damage Multiplier” which makes them deal more damage than a regular attack, but this is not always the case.

The abilities that your character can wield are limited by their classes, and the levels they have in those classes. For example, the character “Rydia” is a Rank 3 Black Mage, which means she can use up to Rarity 3 Black Magic, however she’s unable to use any Rarity 4 or 5 Black Magic.

Another thing to know is that as awesome as they all look, a lot of abilities simply aren’t worth the effort to make… Here is a list of some of the standout abilities that you should strongly consider investing into. Note that this is not all of the good abilities, merely some of the best ones.

Retaliate – There’s a great guide on this site around basing your entire battle strategy around this skill

“Honing” vs “Crafting”

Honing an ability will increase it’s rank (Abilities start at Rank 1, and finish at Rank 5) which gives you an additional 2 casts per rank (1 for Summons). Crafting an ability will also give you 2 casts of that ability (1 for summons, and some abilities start at 4 casts), which may trick you into thinking that crafting a second ability is better than Honing, since Honing costs more Materia.

For the most part, you don’t want to craft multiples of the same skill. Later on you’ll need more varied skills, and having to use two of your valuable Ability Slots on the same skill is very very wasteful, so it’s better to spend the extra Materia to hone a skill.

There are, however, some skills you will want multiples of and Double Cut is a prime example of this.

The Rank you Hone an ability to has no effect on Damage, Status Effect Success Rate or which characters can/can not use the ability.

Summons

Summon Orbs are unique Orbs, in that they can only be obtained via Events, and cannot be found anywhere in the Classic or Elite Dungeons.

Summons also have only 1 cast per rank, unlike other skills which start at either 2 or 4 and gain an additional 2 per rank.

Do not let this fool you into thinking that Summons are incredibly powerful. They are by no means bad skills, but for the effort and cost you have to put into making them, and their incredibly low casts… it’s just not worth it. The only two Summons that are worth making are not currently released in our version of the game, but they are “Kirin” and “Carbuncle”.

Equipment and Relics

Equipment is one of the most important aspects of FF:RK, specifically the ability to Combine equipment to make stronger versions of itself. If you get a weapon to it’s highest level, let’s say in this case a 1* Spear which has a maximum level of 3, then you are able to combine it with another 1* Spear (Of any level) in order to upgrade that Spear to a 1*+ Spear, which will have a new maximum level of 5 (And will remain at the level 3 it was, rather than resetting to level 1). This weapon will now display as a 2* weapon, and though it is stronger than it was before it won’t be as strong as a weapon that starts out at 2*.

Each weapon and armour can be fused twice, into a ++ version of itself, which will display as 2*’s higher than it was originally. (E.g a 1*++ weapon shows as a 3*, and a 5*++ shows as a 7*).

Because of this system, as well as Record Synergy, it means you don’t actually need to have any of the gear that you get from the Relic system (Although it’s certainly very nice to have)

I have to stress the importance that a 1*++ is not as powerful as a 3*, but it’s also significantly easier to get than a 3*.

Accessories cannot be upgraded in any way.

Relics

The Relics that I mentioned are the “Gacha” system for this game. You can pay either Mythril, which is awarded in various ways from playing the game, or Gems, which are bought with real life currency, in order to summon either 1, or 11, Relics.

These Relics are pieces of gear that range in rarity from 3-5*’s, and are for the most part unavailable elsewhere in the game (There are a few exceptions to this, but not many).

Generally it is considered better to save up 50 Mythril in order to do the 11 Relic Pack, as you are essentially getting an extra one for free, but some people are impatient, or want to try and improve their gear faster, and will buy Relics one at a time as they gain the Mythril. Neither option, nor paying with Gems rather than Mythril, effects the chance of getting better Relics.

In addition to the Mythril and Gem options, each day you also get a “Common Relic Draw” which can get anything from the Mythril/Gem Relic section, as well any 1-2* in the game as well. You will most likely get 1-2* items from this for your entire time playing, as the odds of getting anything higher are very low, it’s been reported that the chance of getting a 5* from this is less than 0.01%.

Every time a new event is launched, and occasionally with new content, more items are added to the Relic “pool”. This is generally the character specific weapon from the event, or some of the ones from characters obtained via the Classic Dungeons. When this happens, either intentionally or accidently, it “Resets” the Common Relic Draw, allowing you to make an additional one that day (Provided you already made one earlier).

Record Synergy

“Record Synergy” is the system put in place that boosts Characters and Equipment when used in the realm they originated in (Indicated by the Roman Numerals in brackets after a name). For characters this is a straight boost of 10 levels worth of stats (A significant increase), but this system is more complicated for Weapons and Armour.

Simply put though, a 1*++ Weapon with a Synergy Boost will have as much, if not more than, a 4* Weapon of the same type, without a synergy boost.

It’s this system that means you shouldn’t “Need” any Relic items for a very long time, if ever and it also means that you will rarely ever have a “Best” team, and should focus on having a wide range of characters available for use.

2 Comments

Think you can add a list of orbs and locations besides the 3* on the site? Example, best place with lowest energy required to farm 2 star lesser power + lesser non elemental + lesser earth orb for retaliate? This will definitely be very helpful to farm a certain orb or skill to hone.

Started playing a week ago and the first few days were very confusing, referenced this as I spent my stamina in different areas, now I’m running a squad that can hit elite dungeons and hard events without breaking too much sweat.